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Request for jags package to be added to CRAN Debian/Ubuntu archives

4 messages · Douglas Bates, Dirk Eddelbuettel, Michael Rutter +1 more

#
May I request that Dirk's package for jags be added to the CRAN
archives for Debian and Ubuntu?

Installing the rjags package for R requires specific versions of jags
to be present on the system.  The current version of rjags requires
jags version 2.2.0 or later but the version on the Ubuntu archives at
Canonical (i.e. not the CRAN archives) is 2.1.0-2

I can always install Dirk's package on packages.debian.org but it
would be handy to have a version for Ubuntu.
#
On 18 April 2011 at 09:14, Douglas Bates wrote:
| May I request that Dirk's package for jags be added to the CRAN
| archives for Debian and Ubuntu?
| 
| Installing the rjags package for R requires specific versions of jags
| to be present on the system.  The current version of rjags requires
| jags version 2.2.0 or later but the version on the Ubuntu archives at
| Canonical (i.e. not the CRAN archives) is 2.1.0-2
| 
| I can always install Dirk's package on packages.debian.org but it
| would be handy to have a version for Ubuntu.

Michael is so good that he anticipated this request several months ago:

edd at max:~$ wajig policy jags
jags:
  Installed: 2.2.0-1maverick0
  Candidate: 2.2.0-1maverick0
  Version table:
 *** 2.2.0-1maverick0 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/marutter/rrutter/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.1.0-2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe amd64 Packages
edd at max:~$ 


Kidding aside, he also uses it and hence packaged it. It is on his Launchpad
PPA which is now recommended for folks like you and me (and everybody else
who wants to help test alpha/beta/rc).  Michael had felt that jags was 'too
specialised' to be put on CRAN; this email may change his mind.  Either way,
you are just one edit and one apt-get or wajig away from it.

Cheers, Dirk
#
On 04/18/2011 10:14 AM, Douglas Bates wrote:
Doug,

(As is Dirk's habit, he answers an email about the same time I am 
writing mine :).  Here it is anyway)

You can find the latest version of jags (as well as coda, rjags, r2jags, 
and r2winbugs) at my Launchpad PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/rrutter

To add the PPA, use:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:marutter/rrutter

This PPA is now used to seed CRAN, so any package found on CRAN for 
Ubuntu first appears on this PPA, then is mirrored to CRAN 12 to 24 
hours later.

My goal this summer is to make more R-related Ubuntu packages available 
via PPA.  The original plan was to keep CRAN as a location for the base 
and recommended packages with the PPA as the location for other 
packages.  This will allow for what I think are three levels of R 
'usage' in Ubuntu.

1.  The stable approach of using the packages released by Canonical 
whenever a new version of Ubuntu is released.

2.  By adding CRAN, stable updates to R and the recommended packages 
will be available via apt/synaptic.

3.  By adding a PPA or two, you will receive alphas and betas of R as 
well as updates to some non-recommended packages (with more to come in 
the future) via apt/synaptic.

Maybe we need to expand what is available on CRAN?  One thought I had 
was to get the packages listed in the "CRAN Task Views" all available at 
least via PPA.  Would those make sense on CRAN as well?

Michael
#
Le 18/04/2011 16:38, Michael Rutter a ?crit :
not sure I understood every thing correctly, but to me it would be 
wonderful to have the full cran tasks packages available from the CRAN, 
but I would be reluctant to use the PPA with unstable/dev R versions. Or 
maybe then should clearly separate a PPA for R versions and one for 
packages?

Thanks in any case for this nice work!!

Mat